Forget Dry January, people are trying to quit something much harder than booze this January – Facebook.

The 99 Days project has seen its number of quitters triple this month – and its founder says that most people feel ‘happier’ after doing so.

Around a quarter of people who manage to quit Facebook for the full 99 days also quit for good, according to Merijn Straathof (the man behind 99 Days).

Data from the project will be used in university research projects at Leiden University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to work out why some people find Facebook so addictive – and what happens when you quit.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Straathof says, ‘We’re not saying everyone should. But for us the idea of not using Facebook was a very fascinating one. I stopped when we started the project and haven’t returned since. Like many others that have participated I felt liberated.

‘I found myself complaining that I had little time to do the things I wanted to do. But I hadn’t realised until then that I was spending so much time looking at what other people were doing.

Straathof says that people who give up mostly say they feel happier – and almost everyone says they have more time.

Straathof says, ‘More time is a pretty consistent theme reported by participants. In many cases, people cite specific activities on which they spend their newly found time, such as reading books or hanging out with friends in person.

‘People also often describe the feeling that they are missing out on something or a fear that they might be missing out on something. A subset of these responses go on to say that they later peeked on Facebook and it turned out that they hadn’t actually missed anything, or that anything that was terribly important was communicated to them via other channels.

‘Our surveys show that most of the people feel slightly happier after the experiment. A significant amount also claims to be ‘much happier’ without Facebook.

‘We do have to say that this is hard to tell exactly, since a lot of the people that return to Facebook also stop filling in the surveys. From the people that finish the 99 days about 25% says they will not return to Facebook.